It's the first week of February and Mark Cavendish has won three races, his best ever tally so early in the season.
Freestyling
The next day, it was a little less chaotic, but there were still lots of 'trains' in evidence. And yet the result was the same: Cavendish won, despite losing his notional lead-out man on the run-in.
It happened when, with just over a kilometre left, Matteo Trentin went one way around a roundabout, Cavendish the other. In the confusion, Trentin glanced around looking for Cavendish's Omega Pharma-Quick-step jersey but couldn't see it - he had forgotten he was wearing the silver jersey of points leader.
Cavendish was found by another teammate, Niki Terpstra, who helped him move up "about fifteen positions." That helped, but still he ended up, as he put it, "freestyling." And using his initiative.
Here he is describing the final kilometre: "I knew from experience that the wind comes from the right, so you want to be on the left. But the road sweeps right, so the peloton naturally moves to the right, and I knew the gap would open on the left. So I did exactly the same as last year [when he also won] and just sat there waiting until 300, 200 metres to go."
As the others followed the curve of the road, looking for the shortest line, Cavendish remained sheltered on the left. When the road cleared, he pounced.
Surely now we can conclude that speed, bike handling skill and innate intelligence - the ability to analyse fast-moving, fluid situations in a split-second, and make rapid decisions - go much further in explaining Cavendish's rate of wins than a well-drilled lead-out train, which can certainly make the task easier, but never easy.
I don't think there are many cyclists who could describe a finish in the kind of detail offered by Cavendish on the Al Khor Corniche. Later, I asked him if he could list all 93 of his victories. "I couldn't list them," he said, "but if you told me them I could probably talk you through the last kilometre of every one."
The scary thing is, he probably could.
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